I do not believe in the supernatural, magic, ghosts or anything like that. However, I can be very superstitious about tempting fate and won’t make jokes or flippant remarks that could be interpretted as such.
For example, my partner made a dark joke about how she’d rather have cancer than such and such. I begged her not to say such things, not because the thought of her having cancer upset me (although it did), but because it feels as if saying stuff like that could make it happen.
I haven’t really noticed a burst of activity, but it’s certainly occured to me if I ever turned to a life of crime that I’d do stuff during that shift change, a couple of the departments we dispatch for definitely take their time with it and there’s often a pretty solid block of time where unless something serious is going down you’re not getting a quick police response.
Some of them handle it more efficiently than others, and the size of the town is a pretty big factor too. I’ve had more than a few callers complain about how long it’s taking because they live right by the station, but usually officers aren’t just hanging around at the station, they’re out on patrol and responding to incidents, shift change is pretty much the one time you’re going to find the station full of cops.